My Forum

£27/29 for a half marathon with what must be minimal costs as it's off road and marshaled by volunteers and some army cadets is not good value though. It was a good race, but just lacking in the value for money area.

Nice race route and well marshaled. The Southville (?) guy running up the hill in a jesters outfit and banging a drum certainly helped keep me going. More hills than I usually like as I prefer nice flat road courses, but that wasn't a surprise and I knew what I was letting myself in for. Nice to get a beer at the finish.

Price is very excessive for what it is though and half it's current entry would be much fairer.

From being stood within earshot of the discussions at the start line as they tried to get the trams stopped I don't think I'll blame them for that. There were Metrolink(?) people present who were equally perplexed as to why they kept on running so it seemed more like the tram people had been told and it was all arranged to stop them, just someone in Metrolink forgot to tell their control room.

The route was grand for the first 1.5km and from 3km to 8km, but I was very glad I wasn't back in the mass field when they came to running through the BBC complex and across the bridges and along the quay side. Way too narrow, that first bridge looked very dangerous whe I went across it beforehand as you'd easily have people with knees taken out on the far side of it. There was a young kid stood on top ot the obstacle when I went past and I hope he stayed there when the masses went past as he was a good warning of what you were potentially runing into.

Looked like the waterstations were a bit of an afterthought with two blokes and a couple of pallets for bottled water still wrapped up behind them so clearly no idea how to go about doing a waterstation.

The bag drop was not suitable for a running race, it was a theatre cloakroom with one woman on it handing out tokens. For a running race people are already wearing the token in the form of a race number, save yourself the hassle and just take in bags with numbers already attached. I went to tell reception they needed more staff, but the Lowry security bloke got there 2 seconds before me and was instructing the receptionists to get down there to help out already. Felt sorry for the woman on the cloakroom as she clearly hadn't signed up for that kind of hassle

The RoadID site actually gives a good run down on what details are actually needed on any form of ID you may be carrying. Name (obviously) year of birth (don't need the exact date), city (don't need your full address), then a couple of contact numbers and then a list of any medical conditions that ambulance people should need to know about. They also give you a list of the know abreviations for certain conditions.

You don't need your full address or date of birth as that isn't needed for treating you on the side of the road, an approximate idea of age though from year of birth is sufficient. Your name, city and contact numbers will be more than enough for them to figure out exactly who you are when they get you to hospital.